The Farm by Tom Rob Smith.

                               The Farm by Tom Rob Smith.

"He drove me to the madhouse. He said this is where I belong, in rooms next to people howling like animals."

"The Farm" follows a similar pattern to many of the Scandi murder/mysteries: picturesque villages and isolated farms with bleak landscapes, taciturn patriarchs such as Hakan who dominates Elise his wife, Mia his adopted daughter and the entire community. He thrives on this power. We have an amateur sleuth plagued by her own nightmares seeking answers to the disappearance of a vulnerable child. Are we talking about murder or abduction? Smith presents us with stories within stories, multi-layered. Fascinating.

You might remember Smith from "Child 44" (2006) one of a trilogy, the first ever thriller to be longlisted for the Man Booker Prize? Ridley Scott snatched up the film rights and the film has just been released (Autumn 2015). This one is a murder mystery set in Stalin's USSR. "London Spy" BBC2  drama is currently on tv, Smith's first drama for television.

More than 4 years ago Smith received a call from his father with the unexpected and shocking revelation that his mother had been committed to an asylum. It was alleged that Smith's father had become involved in criminal activity leading to a sinister conspiracy. She discharged herself and flew from Sweden to London in an attempt to convince Smith and his brother that she was not insane.

Smith had the unenviable task of deciding whether she was insane. This autobiographical streak separates the novel from Smith's trilogy, more typically Scandi in essence, but this one gives it a disturbing and chilling feel and a very real appeal to readers who devour thrillers like myself. How does the past affect people's behaviour and perceptions in the present? There seems to be a fine dividing line between the truth and how we, as individuals, might perceive the truth. In a nutshell, people and events are very often not what they appear to be.

Daniel, a freelance garden designer, the son of Tilde and Chris is 29, living in London with his partner Mark, a 40 year old corporate lawyer, a fact he has chosen to conceal from his parents. He didn't want his parents to think they had failed: "The memory of a perfect childhood would die, and we'd mourn it as surely as we would the passing of a person we loved." He saw the concealment as well-intentioned cowardice rather than shame. Daniel was under the impression that his parents had a perfect marriage, they were an unbreakable team and were financially comfortable in their retirement. He felt shame, sadness and disbelief at his untrustworthy insights, the raw truth of how poor they actually were.

Hakan Greggson was their Swedish neighbour, a powerful farmer who controlled his wife and daughter Mia, enjoying his power within the local community. The unsolved mystery is what becomes of Mia who abruptly disappears off the face of the earth. Tilde is convinced she has been murdered and collects flimsy bits of evidence which lends itself more to an understanding of Tilde's own psychotic behaviour rooted in what happened to her during the summer of 1963. It's mind-blowing.

"Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad. I don't need a doctor. I need the police."

When Tilde arrives in London she is shabbily dressed, her clothes showed signs of "distress," her shoes were scuffed, trousers crumpled unlike her normal appearance of being well-dressed and she seemed to have aged considerably. Once she felt relatively safe from her enemies she opened her satchel and took out her documents, photos and a black, leatherbound filofax in which she had written copious notes in order to figure out what was going on around her.

When she returned to Sweden 50 years later she felt very much like an outsider in her own country- a Utlanning-a word Tilde felt to be very cruel. The landscape mirrored her sense of loneliness and isolation where "the wilderness rules supreme."

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"This is the landscape that inspired the mythology of trolls, giant lumbering man-eating creatures with mushroom warts on their crooked noses and bellies like boulders."

Monsters could easily hide in the forests, their yellow eyes stalking you, like the dreaded elk!

Tilde had run away from her parents aged 16 travelling through Germany, Switzerland, Holland before finally resting in the UK where she met and married Chris. "I wanted to grow old on the farm with your father. I wanted to build the home I've dreamed about since I was a child. Somewhere special."

She hoped to become self-sufficient, fish for salmon in the nearby river, grow vegetables and convert the outbuildings into rustic guest accommodation. Chris was more pessimistic about the success of this. She recounted swimming alone and naked in the Elk River, feeling vulnerable when she became aware of the presence of a giant elk. The locals didn't believe her story and mocked her. The incident reminded her of the story of a forest princess riding naked on the back of one of them.

She interpreted the sighting as a blessing-they had made the right decision to move to Sweden: "We belonged here." Hakan, a 50 year old seemed to display the vigour of a young man but the cunning of an older one. Defined by his ownership, Tilde referred to him as a "primitive xenophobe."  He was desperate to expand his empire and buy Tilde's farm, offering three times the amount paid. Tilde became paranoid that he wanted them to fail and was constantly spying on them. She felt intimidated by him. Mia, his adopted daughter from Angola was regarded as one of the most beautiful women that Tilde had ever seen. People within the community stared at her with undisguised desire, lust for a better word.
Discovering the truth proves a formidable act for Daniel but delving into Tilde's childhood was paramount, particularly 1963.

"In the summer of 1963 an event changed my life, broke my life and made me a stranger in my own family."

The real truth of the summer of 1963 is shocking………………

Tilde told her son she was terrified when they committed her. She was surrounded by genuine madness and didn't know if she'd ever leave the asylum. Was there a conspiracy? A paedophile ring? Was this the deeper scandal, connected to the murder of Mia? Who was Freja? She was never the sane since seeing the troll. Who killed her? What about Ulf Lund, the hermit whose wife, Anne-Marie committed suicide without any explanation? Something wasn't quite right. "Something rotten at the heart of the community." What can Daniel do? "I'm not saying you're wrong. It's also impossible for me to say you're right." He does the only thing possible, he goes to Sweden to discover the truth for himself, uncovering plenty of skeletons, culminating in an intense and dramatic denouement. Yes, he discovers the truth.

Nothing is what it seems. It's certainly an exciting and gripping novel that will leave you hooked from beginning to end, no doubt about that.

Publisher: Simon and Schuster.   ISBN: 978-84739-675-4

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

Copyright 2015. Permission must be obtained from the author before any of this article review is reproduced.